It seems like a simple search through pictures of every item stocked and the way to grab it is sufficient to accomplish this, and that's well within the capabilities of existing industrial robots. Put Baxter on a line navigating robot and you're there. What am I missing?
For example, now you've identified the position of the item, but it is a plastic bag with a metal grommet on the top, hanging in a row from a metal rod. (as seen in stores) Now what?
Getting there isn't the hard part, it is all the stuff you do once you're there.
More likely they knew they wanted to participate in the robotics conference taking place in Seattle, and they set aside a budget, and then decided to use it for a contest, and then asked what robot they wanted. And it turns out they already know what robot they wanted, because they bought the company that makes the robot-shelf-thingies that currently deliver the bins and groups of items to the human pickers. This is the last step in the process that isn't already automated.
Given that they already bought a related company, I doubt this is just some "boss" saying "yeah, I guess."
I'd say "nice try," but I suspect your reading comprehension is actually higher than you displayed here, but that you just did not in fact try very hard.
And guess what, regardless of if they accept the prize from Amazon or not, they can still name their price, including to Amazon. But I doubt they'll want to lease them. They're going to prefer to buy your company, or license your design.
It might be worth it if you can enter with absolutely no loss of patents or copyrights, or grants of license to Amazon, for anything related to the robot you enter; but only if you were already working on the problem for reasons related to an amount of money that ranks somewhere between 'insulting' and 'hilarious' in comparison to the value of the task. $20k would likely have some difficultly covering even your expenses, much less actually rewarding you, and that's the big prize.
Nonsense, it is easily worth it just if you think you can build a robot that can complete the task.
The design would be worth billions, if you add in a bunch of investment money. (which would flow to a contest winner) And the $20k easily pays back the materials cost of a garage/makerspace-built prototype.
I agree if you're not already thinking about robotics and interested in working on it then it would be a bad idea to enter. But that is true of any technical contest. But you don't need to already be working on it. You only have to believe that you can complete an entry that does that task. Even if there are multiple teams that complete, they'll all be well positioned to make $$$, not just the winner.
The bigger carrot than the $20k is that teams that appear to have an entry with a chance to win can get up to $6000 for travel expenses. So with that, a team of engineering grad students with a small budget could really have a chance. If they know already they want to make some kind of robot, the paid competition travel could make it worthwhile to choose this project. And for a hobbyist or small inventor working on a budget, it could have a similar enabling effect.
So basically they're paying the winners less than one year's salary for a picker, in order to develop a technology that will permanently replace virtually every picker in all their warehouses. I see how this is a good deal for Amazon, not so much how it's fair for the competitors or good for the human race.
No.
They're giving out a prize for making one, not buying the rights to it, or even the prototype. Participants are "encouraged" to "share their approach" and the actual rules and what that means aren't released yet. The deal is more like, win some $$ now, start a business based on that, and then sell the business to Amazon in 2 years for some absurd amount of money.
And like the contest site points out, their picking task is essentially the same as taking a book off a shelf, so if somebody wins their robot will have substantial use as a service bot.
Which is hilarious, my favorite thing about Ruby is that I can write my Ruby in plain C. There is a simple C API for the whole language, including interacting with the pure Ruby parts.
Unlike Perl, which requires a whole extra glue language.
... except for the tens of thousands of independent mechanics, garages, and body shops.
I don't know about your area, but here, warranty work is handled only at a dealership.
So if there are cars that don't have significant warranty service, but are so much cheaper they can still compete, then there is no problem there. Warranty isn't a free lunch, it is something that a minority of car buyers pay for. (most people buy used cars with no warranty, or buy a new car and keep it past the warranty)
This isn't like a "lemon law" situation where buyers are being "taken for a ride," this is a simple matter of competition where there is no accusation of confusion or fraud.
What's your problem, have a bad vacation on Crete or something? Did they use multimedia devices to shrink your brain, or did you shrink it all on your own? How do you know the Cretins did it? Did find you a note you left yourself from when you were still functional?
I don't think my mom's gf's wife is "into that." Wrong equipment in your story, man. You've got a long ways to go before you're ready for a career at Forum magazine.
Yeah, if he's stuck in a state of decline, he can still contribute. His argument is absurd. If simply not being able to contribute as much as you used to means you'd be better off dead, hey, I guess that means anybody 5% less capable than me is better off dead already. Totally moral and ethical fail from this so-called "bioethicist."
My advice to you is to read the links before posting them. They do not describe anything like what Russia is proposing.
I only clicked the "you" link. First I'd like to thank you for noticing the similarity between myself and President Obama, though I am not actually Mr. Obama.
Second, I'd like to point out that these are very different situations. The power that the Senate Committee voted to give to the President is the power to order companies to shut down networks during cyber-attacks capable of causing massive damage or loss of life. There is not some nebulous "emergency" where he can do this; only during narrowly defined situations that threaten to damage the infrastructure being shut down, or threatening loss of life. So for example, if somebody cracks into a nuclear power plant and is causing it to overload, the President can order whatever ISP the power plant is connected through to unplug. Then everybody can slow down and think about, OK, which connections do we really need to shut down, and which can we turn back on? It wouldn't be a blanket "internet kill switch," it would be orders to individual companies whose networks are under attack. And the attacks would have to be stronger than any cyber-attack except for Stuxnet.
So in short, get a clue, and if you're linking to things that are totally different than what is discussed, try making and defending an actual point. Because those links don't speak to this issue.
Can you think of a scenario which can be called an emergency where you would benefit from protection from malicious misinformation?
Think hard.
No.
I can think of situations where providing accurate information from a more trusted source would protect me from "misinformation," but I can't think of any emergency or security situation where I would benefit from being cut off from [alleged] misinformation.
Just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean they didn't think "hard" enough. I always wonder though, what sort of people think that thinking is like lifting weights, where you can do it "harder." I mean, an intelligent person just thinks. It just happens. Trying to think "harder" means being distracted by some goal, and that doesn't improve the thinking process. If I think about the most difficult chess tournaments I competed in, my best wins against stronger opponents, I wasn't thinking "harder." I was thinking more easily.
Only if necessary. However, the correct branches of Government still hold their respective powers, and elections continue to be free and fair. We have the system chose, the secret rules we continue to choose. It is election season, look around. Most voters are OK with it.
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but that isn't some conspiracy theory, or secret program, and the actual law that that program is designed to study will involve odometer checks not GPS. GPS is being used for the study, because it allows quick results. Having to manually check the millage of all the vehicles would not only delay the information, it would balloon the cost of the study, and quite simply the study would not even happen.
The reason we're doing pilot studies on the feasibility of mileage-based taxes is twofold: * We have high adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, and currently we're projected to run out of money to maintain roads because our road funding is mostly from the gas tax. No gas, no gas tax! * Anti-environmentalists are complaining about gas vehicles having to subsidize electric without a vote, by avoiding the tax that is used to maintain the roads.
Care to elaborate on how any of that has anything to do with what you were replying to?
And by-the-way, any such future changes will be decided by a direct vote of the People of Oregon.
The "Internet of Things" is a solution without a problem.
Tools are not problems or solutions.
The problem is, and I'm using the example that was often cited in the 90s, you're 3 hours into your vacation and are worried you might have left the stove or coffee maker on. Being able to login to your home network and check the status could save your vacation! Otherwise you have to worry the whole time, or call somebody and beg them to visit your house, and probably have to give up the location of your spare key over an unsecure line. Networked coffee makers were, of course, already decades old, though most were custom built.
I find it... unlikely... that you truly cannot find your own examples of where information about "things" is useful to the owner of said things. It should be... very easy.
... I think we need to consolidate both the authentication and the data storage of all of these different services. Whether you use Google Docs or Microsoft Office Live or some other web-based document editor, you should be able to store and manage the documents in a consistent place, accessed through a standard API.
You seem to miss the fact that the companies could do that now, but don't want to. You're basically proposing to strip freedom from service companies, and have some sort of government regulator determine where their storage Must Be, and what API they're restricted to only using. Otherwise, you'd simply be proposing that companies stop wanting what they want, and everybody to agree on a common solution. Which is silly, because human traits are distributed according to a known distribution, and it is guaranteed that both individuals and companies will want things from the full range of possibilities.
What we already have is a system where those of us who are intolerant of platform lock and restrict ourselves to only certainly types of tools that support interoperability can already do this.
And, by-the-way, Google doesn't have a walled garden, they have an open API and other companies can already integrate and let their users keep backend data in a variety of google services such as google drive. You can remix or mashup the services of any company that has an open API. And you can go the other way in most cases, and import your data stored in other services to the google services. It is only the companies that don't, that instead have a walled garden, that deny this ability. The fact that you conflate walled gardens and open APIs suggests to me that you don't actually understand the technologies you're discussing.
I've been saying "no, never" to platform lock since 1998, and interoperability has only improved. It has only improved. You're not sharing and inter-operating because you're willing to use sucky services. That is the only reason. You can't save others from their sucky choices without stripping their Freedom, you can only save yourself by making better choices.
Your State is obviously badly in need of a "ballot measure" system. In most US States, the type of law you imagine would only last until the next election, when it would be repealed.
Here in Oregon, State politicians who vote "Yes" on a law later repealed have a 100% rate of being replaced by their own party in the next Primary Election. The result is that anything controversial, they don't even vote on the law; they only vote on referring it to the voters. Voters don't punish politicians for asking us to decide, even if they asked us to say "yes" and we actually say "no."
Also, insurance isn't a licensed product, so it can't have a EULA. They would need a clear agreement, there would be a whole extra privacy form. And there only has to be 1 insurance company that doesn't require it for it to not actually be required. There would be instant demand for such an option, so it would be offered, because insurance is highly competitive.
And, the idea of a contractual requirement connected to a drivers license that has nothing to do with driving is pretty silly. That is unlikely to get past scrutiny from the Courts, even if you can find a State with voters so stupid that such a law would get passed.
Slashdot Mirror
Would a card board box, with a midget inside qualify as a robot ?
No batteries needed!
Only if you resurrect Steve Jobs to stand next to it waving his hand, "This is the droid you are looking for."
It seems like a simple search through pictures of every item stocked and the way to grab it is sufficient to accomplish this, and that's well within the capabilities of existing industrial robots. Put Baxter on a line navigating robot and you're there. What am I missing?
For example, now you've identified the position of the item, but it is a plastic bag with a metal grommet on the top, hanging in a row from a metal rod. (as seen in stores) Now what?
Getting there isn't the hard part, it is all the stuff you do once you're there.
More likely they knew they wanted to participate in the robotics conference taking place in Seattle, and they set aside a budget, and then decided to use it for a contest, and then asked what robot they wanted. And it turns out they already know what robot they wanted, because they bought the company that makes the robot-shelf-thingies that currently deliver the bins and groups of items to the human pickers. This is the last step in the process that isn't already automated.
Given that they already bought a related company, I doubt this is just some "boss" saying "yeah, I guess."
I'd say "nice try," but I suspect your reading comprehension is actually higher than you displayed here, but that you just did not in fact try very hard.
And guess what, regardless of if they accept the prize from Amazon or not, they can still name their price, including to Amazon. But I doubt they'll want to lease them. They're going to prefer to buy your company, or license your design.
It might be worth it if you can enter with absolutely no loss of patents or copyrights, or grants of license to Amazon, for anything related to the robot you enter; but only if you were already working on the problem for reasons related to an amount of money that ranks somewhere between 'insulting' and 'hilarious' in comparison to the value of the task. $20k would likely have some difficultly covering even your expenses, much less actually rewarding you, and that's the big prize.
Nonsense, it is easily worth it just if you think you can build a robot that can complete the task.
The design would be worth billions, if you add in a bunch of investment money. (which would flow to a contest winner) And the $20k easily pays back the materials cost of a garage/makerspace-built prototype.
I agree if you're not already thinking about robotics and interested in working on it then it would be a bad idea to enter. But that is true of any technical contest. But you don't need to already be working on it. You only have to believe that you can complete an entry that does that task. Even if there are multiple teams that complete, they'll all be well positioned to make $$$, not just the winner.
The bigger carrot than the $20k is that teams that appear to have an entry with a chance to win can get up to $6000 for travel expenses. So with that, a team of engineering grad students with a small budget could really have a chance. If they know already they want to make some kind of robot, the paid competition travel could make it worthwhile to choose this project. And for a hobbyist or small inventor working on a budget, it could have a similar enabling effect.
So basically they're paying the winners less than one year's salary for a picker, in order to develop a technology that will permanently replace virtually every picker in all their warehouses. I see how this is a good deal for Amazon, not so much how it's fair for the competitors or good for the human race.
No.
They're giving out a prize for making one, not buying the rights to it, or even the prototype. Participants are "encouraged" to "share their approach" and the actual rules and what that means aren't released yet. The deal is more like, win some $$ now, start a business based on that, and then sell the business to Amazon in 2 years for some absurd amount of money.
And like the contest site points out, their picking task is essentially the same as taking a book off a shelf, so if somebody wins their robot will have substantial use as a service bot.
Rails may die.
Rails may die, but ActiveRecord will live on. It used to suck, but since 3.x it is the best ORM in any language. I'd love a C port.
Which is hilarious, my favorite thing about Ruby is that I can write my Ruby in plain C. There is a simple C API for the whole language, including interacting with the pure Ruby parts.
Unlike Perl, which requires a whole extra glue language.
Don't let them bring you down, I'm sure this is finally the update where windows is ready for the desktop. What do you have without your dreams?
It gives a +1 to all Shark Jump saving throws for 6 months, but they have to spend an extra 1m GP explaining it.
Isn't that what Windows 8 was supposed to do? I am confused.
Where is the confusion? It was supposed to. And now a new version is supposed to. Add those together. Normalize the units. The easy answer, it failed!
Yeah, the feature list sounds like a 90s linux desktop. Is Windows finally ready for the power-user desktop?! This could be the year.
... except for the tens of thousands of independent mechanics, garages, and body shops.
I don't know about your area, but here, warranty work is handled only at a dealership.
So if there are cars that don't have significant warranty service, but are so much cheaper they can still compete, then there is no problem there. Warranty isn't a free lunch, it is something that a minority of car buyers pay for. (most people buy used cars with no warranty, or buy a new car and keep it past the warranty)
This isn't like a "lemon law" situation where buyers are being "taken for a ride," this is a simple matter of competition where there is no accusation of confusion or fraud.
What's your problem, have a bad vacation on Crete or something? Did they use multimedia devices to shrink your brain, or did you shrink it all on your own? How do you know the Cretins did it? Did find you a note you left yourself from when you were still functional?
I don't think my mom's gf's wife is "into that." Wrong equipment in your story, man. You've got a long ways to go before you're ready for a career at Forum magazine.
Yeah, if he's stuck in a state of decline, he can still contribute. His argument is absurd. If simply not being able to contribute as much as you used to means you'd be better off dead, hey, I guess that means anybody 5% less capable than me is better off dead already. Totally moral and ethical fail from this so-called "bioethicist."
My advice to you is to read the links before posting them. They do not describe anything like what Russia is proposing.
I only clicked the "you" link. First I'd like to thank you for noticing the similarity between myself and President Obama, though I am not actually Mr. Obama.
Second, I'd like to point out that these are very different situations. The power that the Senate Committee voted to give to the President is the power to order companies to shut down networks during cyber-attacks capable of causing massive damage or loss of life . There is not some nebulous "emergency" where he can do this; only during narrowly defined situations that threaten to damage the infrastructure being shut down, or threatening loss of life. So for example, if somebody cracks into a nuclear power plant and is causing it to overload, the President can order whatever ISP the power plant is connected through to unplug. Then everybody can slow down and think about, OK, which connections do we really need to shut down, and which can we turn back on? It wouldn't be a blanket "internet kill switch," it would be orders to individual companies whose networks are under attack. And the attacks would have to be stronger than any cyber-attack except for Stuxnet.
So in short, get a clue, and if you're linking to things that are totally different than what is discussed, try making and defending an actual point. Because those links don't speak to this issue.
Can you think of a scenario which can be called an emergency where you would benefit from protection from malicious misinformation?
Think hard.
No.
I can think of situations where providing accurate information from a more trusted source would protect me from "misinformation," but I can't think of any emergency or security situation where I would benefit from being cut off from [alleged] misinformation.
Just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean they didn't think "hard" enough. I always wonder though, what sort of people think that thinking is like lifting weights, where you can do it "harder." I mean, an intelligent person just thinks. It just happens. Trying to think "harder" means being distracted by some goal, and that doesn't improve the thinking process. If I think about the most difficult chess tournaments I competed in, my best wins against stronger opponents, I wasn't thinking "harder." I was thinking more easily.
Most of my SSH attempts come from Brazil
Only if necessary. However, the correct branches of Government still hold their respective powers, and elections continue to be free and fair. We have the system chose, the secret rules we continue to choose. It is election season, look around. Most voters are OK with it.
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but that isn't some conspiracy theory, or secret program, and the actual law that that program is designed to study will involve odometer checks not GPS. GPS is being used for the study, because it allows quick results. Having to manually check the millage of all the vehicles would not only delay the information, it would balloon the cost of the study, and quite simply the study would not even happen.
The reason we're doing pilot studies on the feasibility of mileage-based taxes is twofold:
* We have high adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, and currently we're projected to run out of money to maintain roads because our road funding is mostly from the gas tax. No gas, no gas tax!
* Anti-environmentalists are complaining about gas vehicles having to subsidize electric without a vote, by avoiding the tax that is used to maintain the roads.
Care to elaborate on how any of that has anything to do with what you were replying to?
And by-the-way, any such future changes will be decided by a direct vote of the People of Oregon.
No, semantically we don't have any information about the views of the reader and who they view as undesirable, so it should be and/or.
The "Internet of Things" is a solution without a problem.
Tools are not problems or solutions.
The problem is, and I'm using the example that was often cited in the 90s, you're 3 hours into your vacation and are worried you might have left the stove or coffee maker on. Being able to login to your home network and check the status could save your vacation! Otherwise you have to worry the whole time, or call somebody and beg them to visit your house, and probably have to give up the location of your spare key over an unsecure line. Networked coffee makers were, of course, already decades old, though most were custom built.
I find it... unlikely... that you truly cannot find your own examples of where information about "things" is useful to the owner of said things. It should be... very easy.
... I think we need to consolidate both the authentication and the data storage of all of these different services. Whether you use Google Docs or Microsoft Office Live or some other web-based document editor, you should be able to store and manage the documents in a consistent place, accessed through a standard API.
You seem to miss the fact that the companies could do that now, but don't want to. You're basically proposing to strip freedom from service companies, and have some sort of government regulator determine where their storage Must Be, and what API they're restricted to only using. Otherwise, you'd simply be proposing that companies stop wanting what they want, and everybody to agree on a common solution. Which is silly, because human traits are distributed according to a known distribution, and it is guaranteed that both individuals and companies will want things from the full range of possibilities.
What we already have is a system where those of us who are intolerant of platform lock and restrict ourselves to only certainly types of tools that support interoperability can already do this.
And, by-the-way, Google doesn't have a walled garden, they have an open API and other companies can already integrate and let their users keep backend data in a variety of google services such as google drive. You can remix or mashup the services of any company that has an open API. And you can go the other way in most cases, and import your data stored in other services to the google services. It is only the companies that don't, that instead have a walled garden, that deny this ability. The fact that you conflate walled gardens and open APIs suggests to me that you don't actually understand the technologies you're discussing.
I've been saying "no, never" to platform lock since 1998, and interoperability has only improved. It has only improved. You're not sharing and inter-operating because you're willing to use sucky services. That is the only reason. You can't save others from their sucky choices without stripping their Freedom, you can only save yourself by making better choices.
Your State is obviously badly in need of a "ballot measure" system. In most US States, the type of law you imagine would only last until the next election, when it would be repealed.
Here in Oregon, State politicians who vote "Yes" on a law later repealed have a 100% rate of being replaced by their own party in the next Primary Election. The result is that anything controversial, they don't even vote on the law; they only vote on referring it to the voters. Voters don't punish politicians for asking us to decide, even if they asked us to say "yes" and we actually say "no."
Also, insurance isn't a licensed product, so it can't have a EULA. They would need a clear agreement, there would be a whole extra privacy form. And there only has to be 1 insurance company that doesn't require it for it to not actually be required. There would be instant demand for such an option, so it would be offered, because insurance is highly competitive.
And, the idea of a contractual requirement connected to a drivers license that has nothing to do with driving is pretty silly. That is unlikely to get past scrutiny from the Courts, even if you can find a State with voters so stupid that such a law would get passed.